‘Die Hard 6’ Titled ‘Die Hardest’ – John McClane Headed to Tokyo?

Based on our 2-star review of A Good Day to Die Hard, it’s clear that (in our opinion) the franchise is running on fumes. Domestically, the movie was something of a flop ($67 million on a $90+ million budget), but international earnings were huge ($235 million), meaning that Fox (which, like many other studios, is showing greater favor to the international market) has good incentive to move forward with the sixth film.

Well, today comes word that Die Hard 6is at least moving into the pre-production phase. The next installment apparently has the working title of Die Hardest, and we have reports about the screenwriter who has been tapped to pen the film, as well as some early plot details.

Total Filmhas the exclusive about Die Hardest, which is apparently being scripted by Ben Trebilcook. If the name is unfamiliar: Trebilcook is currently working on a martial-arts-meets-video games movie called Knockout, and the producer of that film tapped the relatively untested young filmmaker to write Die Hard 6.

The plot details we know so far are that Die Hardest will once again take place predominately overseas – shifting from NYC to Tokyo. This would mean that John McClane (Bruce Willis) would get a chance to kill bad guys of a whole new nationality – while still leaving room for him to crack many America-centric jokes, as well as making crass cultural observations like how Japanese dudes can’t take a punch, or how some femme fatale isn’t acting like a proper little Geisha. You know the drill by now.

“In Russia, You do not Die Hard – Hard Die YOU!”

Things are only in the script treatment stage at the moment, which leaves the studio plenty of room to scrap the project at low cost, should they fail to convince Willis and franchise producer Alex Young to sign off. For his part, however, Trebilcook seems hopeful that his work will be up to par:

It is extremely faithful to the franchise and characters and is a natural progression. It’s also a very plausible storyline… [There’s] the possibility producers might go back and find some other source material to base the next one on, like they did with the first and second. Mine though, I feel it could be the Rocky Balboa of the Die Hard franchise.

…Hopefully that Rocky Balboa reference means that he’s writing the closing chapter to this worn out story (ZING!).

Would you like to see John McClane take on Tokyo? Or is it time for this entire franchise to just go ahead and ‘Die Hard?’

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We’ll keep you updated on the status of Die Hardestas more news comes to light.